At about half-past six, when the throng in Upper Daylesford Street was at its height and the long-threatening rain had begun to spatter down, Roach, fumbling with numbed fingers for elevenpence change, caught sight of Mr. James on the other side of the street. There was, as he afterwards explained to certain interested persons, no mistaking Mr. James. For one thing, he was the only resident in Daylesford Gardens with a beard. It was no mere apologetic tuft, either, but a bushy mass of brown hair, that fairly covered his face from the mouth down. Then there was his figure. He was noticeably fat, with a fatness that seemed quite out of proportion to his thin legs, so that he walked always with a cautious waddle, as though afraid that his weight would overbalance him. Roach noted the passing of the familiar ungainly shape without interest. Then something made him look round again, and stare after him with renewed attention. That something was the simple fact that on this occasion, Mr. James was accompanied by another person.

“The old —— what lives by ’isself,” was Roach’s private description of Mr. James. Most of the Gardens’ inhabitants, indeed, were of the type that keep themselves to themselves. Roach respected them all the more for that. But Mr. James was of them all the most completely alone. During his short residence at No. 27, no visitor had ever been known to cross the threshold, not so much as a letter or parcel, so Crabtree asserted, had ever been delivered there. And never, until now, had he seen Mr. Colin James in the street except alone.

But this time—there could be no doubt of it—Mr. James had found a friend. Or if not a friend, at any rate a near acquaintance, to judge from the way they went along the pavement side by side, their heads close together, as though in quiet, earnest discussion. A pity, thought Roach, that the stranger was on the far side as they went round the corner, so that James’s great bulk blotted him out completely. Just for curiosity’s sake, he would like to have known—“News, sir? Yessir! Fi’pence change, thank you, sir!”

He screwed his head round to look down the Gardens. There was a lamp-post opposite No. 27, and the couple were just within its beams. The light shone on the yellow-brown bag which Mr. James always carried. They stopped and Mr. James was evidently fumbling for his key. Then he opened the door, went in and the stranger followed him. Roach, as he turned to thrust a paper into the hand of a customer, felt oddly triumphant. Mr. James had a visitor! In a small way, it was as though a long-standing record had been broken.